Sense and the City - Background and the Finished Show

With a long track record in urban regeneration and museums, in 2009 Stephen was asked by the Director at London Transport Museum, Sam Mullins, to develop a temporary exhibition about the future of cities.  He was appointed Curator of the Future - from mid 2009 until March 2012.

Stephen provided research, conceptual thinking, briefing, design and liaison services - working with MIT (Carlo Ratti's lab), TfL, UCL (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis) as well as the Royal College of Art - vehicle design.  Stephen is working with the RCA now on the Creative Exchange project.

The development description:

New ways of sensing London's transport, energy and information systems are now emerging that allow us to understand the city in radically new ways.  At the same time the inexorable growth in mobile devices is letting residents and visitors shop, travel and work differently.  We are in the middle of a revolution of connection and networking.  How will this change the way we access and use the city?

Senseable Cities is a new exhibition at the Museum which asks if these technological innovations offer a real opportunity for the link between economic growth and traffic growth in London to be broken? Are we at a moment of step change, when home working, online shopping, tele-conferencing and mobile devices reduce the need to undertake as many trips including commuting to work everyday? Is this liberating, or do we lose the decompression of the commute and the sociability of the office? Does the ‘death of distance’ suggest a redefinition of the nature and function of the city?  If so, are we on the edge of a deep social change, altering the way we live and work and our connection to multiple communities, local and global?

We changed the title to Sense and the City and this was the result.